The industry term for a device that is attached to a vehicle, by a vehicle dealer, which allows the dealer or financer to track or disable the vehicle should the person to whom the dealer loaned, leased, or sold the vehicle, using financing, fail to keep up with payments, is “payment device” or “wireless-enabled usage reporting device.”
The industry term for finance companies that specialize in the purchase of automobile loans from automobile dealers is “portfolio acquisition”. Some portfolio acquisition companies also lend to automobile dealers against the future payments due on the dealer's loans, a practice that is known in the industry as “payment stream”.
Dealers do not use wireless-enabled usage reporting devices in the necessary high volume levels to make apparent the quality differences between the various wireless-enabled usage reporting devices. This has incentivized wireless-enabled usage reporting device manufacturers to produce the lowest cost wireless-enabled usage reporting device possible rather than produce a high-quality and collection-efficient wireless-enabled usage reporting device. Having a low-cost wireless-enabled usage reporting device is the driving concern for most dealers. This has created a race to the bottom among the wireless-enabled usage reporting device vendors and has driven profit margins to almost unsustainably low levels.
Further, portfolio acquisition companies, who would greatly benefit from a strategy employing the right wireless-enabled usage reporting device technology, have little control over the technology employed by their dealer clients and, therefore, have been unable to fully capitalize on greater usage of the devices.
Thus, what is needed is a computer-based “pay as you go” solution for vehicle dealers and finance companies that allows for the efficient transfer of vehicles and their wireless-enabled usage reporting devices along with any device-related financial obligations within a preferred lender network in conjunction with a portfolio acquisition or payment stream transaction.
More generally, what is needed is a new technology enabling financing, leasing and insurance companies to evaluate the risk associated with a particular vehicle financing obligation, leasing obligation or insurance obligation while respecting the privacy of the vehicle user.